My answer to "life, the universe and everything"

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Me and Mark Cuban

So I was out at Yankee Doodles on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica watching game 7 of the NBA finals. Apparently a bit of a crowd starting forming around at the table next to ours and one of my coworkers says she recognized someone at that table, but didn’t remember who he was. So I asked someone in the crowd who that person was and it turns out it was billionaire Mark Cuban, of Dallas Mavericks and Shark Tank fame. Amazed that he would go drinking in a crowded bar to watch basketball, I resisted the urge to get a photo with him right away, but instead I had felt I had to tell him my interview story with him from U.S. News and World Report from a couple years back. Eventually my other coworkers got pictures with him and I said what the heck, I got a picture with him. Again, I feel he’s probably the most accessible billionaire on the planet and this just proves it.

It’s possible you may have heard this already, but I just have to say it: Mark Cuban has to be one of the coolest, if not the coolest billionaire on the planet. Why? Because he doesn’t act like every other stereotypical billionaire. Even though he owns a movie studio, his studio wasn’t one of the ones suing the file sharing program Grokster. Instead, he was funding Grokster’s defense, and in essence defending the rights of people to file-share (which by the way, even though Grokster lost, doesn’t mean that it is illegal to use). He’s also fighting the music industries lawsuits against people who are using file-sharing programs. Cuban shows up to every Dallas Mavericks game (as the owner), dressed in jeans and a Mavericks shirt. And during home games, he has his email address displayed on the score board. Not to some pr address, his specific Mavericks address, which then sends the messages directly to him and his Sidekick. Unlike most people, he takes the time to read your emails and reply back (not everyone, but a good amount of them). And as if he weren’t accessible enough, he even blogs at Blog Maverick.

So what makes Mark Cuban so cool? Basically, he’s a special guy who doesn’t act special.

Now, you may wonder why I just wrote an entire post on Mark Cuban. Well I wrote him an email requesting an interview with U.S. News. Sure enough, in ten minutes, he got back to me with a very real yes. It was two lines of text and he signed his name “m” on it. Very cool.